Oct 10, 2013 5:56 PM

I Found this in Ossett, West Yorkshire UK. It is carboniferous In age. I want a second opinion because I'm almost positive it's a calamite but I'm not sure. If it is a calamite, how much could it be worth. Also note it has no restoration or repair and it doesn't have any chips. Also it is 3 inches tall and 3 inches thick, and it has tiny sparkly stonesinside which I believe are crystals.

Many specimens of this group of fossil plants, like yours, simply do not contain enough material/information to allow an accurate ID.

Note that calamite is not a real word. In the singular, you may refer to a specimen or piece of Calamites.

The sparkly bits will be crystals of minerals either within the rock comprising the fossil, or possibly as remnants of a vein crossing the specimen (providing a weakness along which the specimen broke).

It is a nice clean specimen, though rather short.

Value: I suggest you look for similar specimens on eBay, but don't get your hopes up.

Thanks for the reply and thanks for the info that calamite isn't a real word but calamites is. Here is a picture of the crystals inside. You can barely see them on the picture, but when you look at it in good light it lookes amazing.

It sounds as if you might appreciate the extra detail afforded by using a binocular microscope; they can be bought second hand at reasonable prices. In the field, a hand lens (as I mentioned in a previous post) is the tool, though it can be used in the lab as well. But a binocular microscope is a better lab tool. That's designed for looking at the surface of hand specimens in reflected light. The other sort of microscope commonly used by geologists is a petrographical microscope, which is designed primarily for looking at thin sections of rock - thin enough that they are translucent. That allows the component minerals to be seen in transmitted light, either plain- or cross-polarized. If you're excited by the little crystals you see in your Calamites specimen, you'd be amazed at how even a dull-looking rock's minerals look in transmitted cross-polarized light! Have a look here - http://micro.magnet.fsu.edu/primer/techniques/polarized/gallery/pages/gneisshornblendesmall.html

Thanks for the reply. Here are a couple of pictures of the fossils in the ground. One of them is longer than me. It is very muddy, but it is huge. It is over 2.10m in length. I will take some more pictures of the fossils in the ground soon.